Just too damn lazy to reach your phone? Pick up the remote

Vid HTC's latest handset has a truly innovative feature, a remote control for those too lazy to reach out and pick up their increasingly oversized handset.

The remote is called the HTC Mini and once paired (using NFC) with the Chinese-only HTC Butterfly it can make and receive calls as well as controlling media playback and displaying notifications on its own colour screen, as the (Chinese) promotional video shows:

At first glance it might seem insane, and even at second look it's an unlikely concept, but connect the handset up to a TV or stereo system and a remote control looks a little less strange, and while such connections will be wireless in time (allowing easy control from the handset), they're often wired docking stations these days.

The Mini was spotted by NFC World, which is always interested in new applications for the Near Field Communications the Mini uses for pairing. Sadly HTC doesn't seem to be doing anything else with the remote control's NFC capability, for the moment at least.

The HTC Mini is being bundled with the high-end Butterfly handset, but we look forward to the idea being more widely adopted for all those occasions when reaching for the phone is just too much effort. ®